The Folklore of Shakespeare. 381
Imogen immediately appears to confess that she ate the food, but we have ample evidence that the fairies expected food as a reward for their household services. Puck remarks :
"And at our stamp here o'er and o'er one falls."
Johnson ridicules the effect of the stamp of an elf, and suggests the substitution of stump for stamp, but Oberon himself sa}'s further on :
" Come my queen, take hand with me, And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be."
Changelings. A changeling was the cause of the quarrel between Oberon and Titania, and the various references in the plays to the cruel robbery of infants by the elves seem natural when we are living in an atmosphere of fairies. When we find Henry IV., intent on State affairs, ex- pressing his bitter disappointment at his son's profligate behaviour with a v.'ish that he was a changeling, we see how deeply the poet was charged with knowledge of the super- stitions of the folk that such a thought should have occurred to him :
" O that it could be prov'd
That some night-tripping fairy had exchang'd
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And call'd mine Percy, his Plantagenet !
Then would I have his Harry, and he luine ;
But let him from my thoughts."
I Henry IV. i. i. 87.
King and Queen of Fairies. In turning to the chief characters among the fairies, Oberon and Titania come first from pride of place. Shakespeare lavished upon them the richest of his wondrous verse, and they interest us in all they say or do, but they are altogether too regal to be representative fairies. Oberon by right of fame was a true king, and his renown was widespread, but Titania is the poet's own creation, and her name was taken from a classic
